Dreams interpretation

So here is the setup. It was Tuesday night, I spoke at the Garden variety group, then went home for dinner, a spicy chicken concoction thanks to Kristi, which was yummy by the way. I went to bed about twelve thirty, which is normal, and fell right asleep. I have been taking two aspirin before bed the past few months, and that is the extend of any mood or mind altering substances in my system.

I guess I am detailing all this because I haven't had any dreams in a few months, and I am curious, firstly, why I haven't had any, and secondly, how do I get myself to have more? I think it all ties into my lack, once again, to writing. So thirdly, it seems, I am detailing all of this simply to practice typing again on the keyboard.

So back to the setup. I am not sure where the dream starts, I never do. It's similar to when you are switching channels on the tv and you can press the button down thirty times and have no clue as to what is on the screen in front of you; sort of a zen moment with the remote, until you find something that catches your eye and all of a sudden you are there, snapped back to reality and watching a program already in progress.

In the dream, when I snap to attention, I am on a tricycle. You have to get past the idea of a kid's little bike and hopefully you have seen the adult version of the three-wheeled bikes at some time in your life, with the basket on the back. We have a few of them at work to get around in. Yes it is about as funky as you are imagining right now but it is also somewhat convenient and not as bad as you may first think when you get used to them. Although I still prefer the golf carts. So I am on the trike with my son standing up in the basket, his hands on my shoulders as we pedal down the street. In front of us my sister is on her own tricycle. I have no idea where we are heading. I am also right now trying to sense the urgency or lack thereof of where we were headed in this dream, but I don't remember. What I do remember is that she was pulling ahead of us, gaining distance, and I was having trouble trying to keep up.

I look down at the front tire and it is flat. Not only flat but rubber basically peeling off the metal frame kind of flat. As I am looking down I really begin to feel the pressure of trying to steer this bike and the fight I am having by trying to move forward. It isn't working, in other words. So we pedal across the street to this little gas station. Connor jumps out and runs in ahead of me. I walk in, I assume, to ask about air for my tire, but I don't actually remember getting the question out. Connor wants a juice, of course. My sister had already gained a strong lead on us and I figure she never looked back for us. While I am inside the store, a very small cramped gas station, both inside and out, I look out the window at a guy getting onto my tricycle and my thought of course is that he is stealing it. So I go outside and grab hold of the basket on the back part of the bike, so he cannot move forward. He gets off the seat and turns back to me ready to fight. I forget the words we exchanged between us but beside my tricycle is another, a red one that was sort of tricked out, although I don't remember specifically in what way. There is a homeless guy on the seat and we have a quick conversation about his bike, all the while I am holding onto the basket and the guy who was stealing mine is looking at me in a defensive stance.

I don't remember waking up. I did not get out of bed in any case, but the dream ended there. It was one of my few dreams where it is in the first person perspective. The whole dream was from my eyes, and they were my eyes, not a character's. I fell back asleep and had a second unrelated dream. This one was not in first-person so much, and it was in what I refer to as “movie mode”. Most of my dreams occur this way, where I am more passive and indirectly involved. There are cut scenes and black screens and a flow about them that translate well into a movie script, sometimes even with an accompanying sound track.

The scene opens up on a long angle shot of a Walmart. It is the front entrance I am sure, but instead of the glass doors and the walled area where they store the carts (I actually have been in Savannah long enough to call them buggies first now, by the way), there is a big warehouse roll-up door; double wide and maybe fifteen feet tall. The shot is seen from stage left above a group of trees that are just beside the building and taller than the roof, or maybe just as tall. In front of the double doors are a group of people and as the camera tightens onto them and pans closer we go past and into the store, where I am hanging around with the police and other witnesses to an apparent crime scene.

The next scene occurs inside somebody's house. I wish I remembered more of the details here, because we were hanging out and drinking and doing dope and the typical “Let's rob a Walmart” kind of atmosphere you would expect in the movies. I say this in hindsight, as if I were watching this movie and not a part of it. I type this now with the expectation of it being a flashback because that's what it was, although I do not remember noting it during the dream, if that makes any sense to y'all. I also cannot tell you I was drinking or smoking or shooting up or anything, because it wasn't really like that. I was the camera operator, in other words. I was in the shot, but it wasn't always me. Sometimes the camera would pan onto me, I would be in the conversation, and other times I was merely an observer, filming until I hear the director say “cut”. But it was one of those kind of scenes, anyway, seven or eight people getting high and thinking it would be a good idea to stir up stuff at the Walmart.

So the next scene occurs again outside of the Walmart, from that treeline as before. We are all there, on top of the trees somehow, we are armed and heading down there for hostages, the actual conversation lost to me now. One character, female lead number one, black hair and I think a bandana and cut off sleeves and an angry disposition about her, heads down first with a shotgun. Somebody behind her, in the parking lot now in front of the open warehouse door, has some weird modified tommy gun; the kind you might see, not in Call of Duty, but an old Duke Nukem BFG gun perhaps. There is discussion about not being able to use that here between the two of them and the scene changes again.

This whole time, I should point out, I feel I am down there with them, as well as up in the trees looking down at them. Now there are hostages being held in a slight circle just inside the door. It is night time, so all is dark except for the interior lights on this small crowd of nine or ten, hostage and gunmen included. There are dim lights in the parking lot, and I don't remember if there were any cars or not. While this discussion about that gun takes place a shotgun blast is heard and one of the hostages is down. After that most of my memory fails me. There is shooting and I think I am hiding in the trees, backing away, trying to not be a part of this.

Female lead number one, and at least one other, are looking for me now in the trees. I have a blanket over me, I remember, and I am crawling through the leaves (twenty, thirty feet in the air?) and then it is the police searching me out, not the shooters. So this must be later again, is what I am thinking while watching this dream. I look down and there are ambulances and bodies being carried out and cops asking questions. Much like the opening scene it seems. So I figure I must be down there as well, and I keep looking.

Next scene is from the viewpoint of the police officer. He is in the trees standing over the blanket, and he lifts it up to reveal the dead gunman. It is me, but it isn't. It is a bigger guy, bald and slightly fat. Thirty something maybe, a tough looking biker kind of guy, not an old pot-bellied guy. But at the same time, it is me, too. I mean, that was the viewpoint I had the whole movie, anyway; what he was seeing is what the camera was showing.

I woke up at this point. It was about five-thirty in the morning now. I smoked a cigarette outside and went back to sleep for another hour or so. I took that cigarette break to try and remember the dream, and that is what I am typing now, those memories and ideas. I don't tend to interpret them as much as I simply enjoy them, as I would a movie. I scared Kristi, though, talking about the party and the drugs and the drinking! And I suppose the violence as well. But I don't believe this is any interior suggestion of my psyche or anything. I think it's just a mini-movie and some place where the basis of my fiction writing comes from.

The first dream was more direct though, and I hope that came through to you as a reader as well. The character was myself, as well as my son and my sister. So maybe there are overtones there that mean something. If we do some first year analysis here, I would ask why am I trying to catch up with my sister? She has a faith and perhaps that is what I am searching. She also lives in Panama and I really want to travel by sailboat across the world, with my son and my girlfriend as well. So maybe it is that I am going after. Then the tire is holding me back, I would then ask myself. Is that work, I wonder? The tricycle came from work, so maybe. Or is it Connor, on the basket, that causes the flat tire and keeps me from going forward? Is there an overall idea of family here, or were the characters there simply because they were easy and quick to conjure.

My head begins to spin. And why the fight? Well, the almost fight and the homeless guy with the “pimp my trike” winner? Too much symbolism here to even worry about, if you know what I mean. Still, I asked you all over here to evaluate my dream for me, so it is open to interpretation. I figure though, while you are hanging out, give a look around at my blog. Read a note, leave a comment. I am hoping to get followers over here and actually push myself to write more often.

Caio.